


For Want of a Nail: Prologue

by ginger_rude



Series: For Want of a Nail [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Episode: s03e13 Will You Play With Me?, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-07 20:07:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21223307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_rude/pseuds/ginger_rude
Summary: Castle Blackspire.  An alternative perspective of a familiar scene; the start of an alternate version of everything that followed.This is a very brief introduction to what's become an increasingly ambitiousstory,one that's gradually evolved from a (relatively) simple relationship plot to one re-anchored in the bigger action narrative and themes in S3 and S4.  I was going to go back and tack it onto the start of the first work in theseries,Defying Gravity.When I tried that, though, I didn't like what it did to the chapter formatting.  So, here 'tis.





	For Want of a Nail: Prologue

Even in her sleep, there is no rest.

Her hand moves instinctively, ceaselessly stroking the becalmed body of her charge. In life—in her **other** life, one might say, if one were to be generous and call this state of existence “alive”—this was her sword hand, the one for slaying monsters.

She has no sword now.

The last time she used a blade was in breaking the chains that held her father. She was on a quest, and she’d followed the virtuous knight's script to the letter. When she arrived in this castle under the world, she believed she’d reached the end of the story. She would set him free, and they would live happily ever after.

He looked at her with ashen eyes. He hadn’t known her. And when she cut him down, his body crumbled into dust. 

It was then that the gods appeared to her and explained the true nature of her duties…

“Hi.”

It’s a kind voice, a gentle one. The brown eyes peering into hers are kind and gentle as well. In the first moments of her shock and confusion, she takes the soft-faced visitor for a young woman. Not that it matters. It’s been so long since she’s seen anyone besides her charge. Even her own face. 

“It’s a dream,” he says; but what difference can it make in this endless dim red half-life what is “dream” and what is “reality?” 

He wants what they all come for, of course. Oh, just a top-up, they say, a little something to tide us over. A drop, a sip, a trickle of power. _They_ can afford to pretend easy satiety, even generosity. They know they can always return. 

The fountain is not the point, she wants to shout at this poor human child. But she can never speak the full truth. She swore an oath. Some might say that never should have done so; that she'd been betrayed, and owed nothing more to gods or men. At that point, though, she’d had nothing but her honor left.

So she tells him what she’s bound to say. That her charge is too dangerous to risk escaping. She’s purposely vague about the danger; she implies that the being she’s sworn to imprison is simply too powerful a killer to loose upon the world. As though the universe hasn’t been shaped by powerful killers, gods and men alike, from the very beginning. 

But the boy is adamant.

“I have something to offer you, too,” he says, and in that moment she sees that he is as she once was. He still has faith.

She wavers. It’s not just her duty, but compassion that prevents her from inflicting this abjection on anyone else. She can at least try to convey the horror of her situation, if not the reason for it. Even now, her charge begins to stir: a howling vortex of confusion and need, tortured into flesh. There will be no comfort for either of you, she wants to tell this impossibly young boy, no light, no rest, no peace, if you take this on. 

In the end, though, she agrees. Access to the fountain in exchange for him taking her place. She tells herself that it’s selfishness that leads her to accept. 

There’s more to it than that, though:

He reminds her of what it’s like to believe in stories.

She should tell him that the story that brought her here is a lie. She would, if she could.

But maybe it's enough that he came here at all. He was never in her script.

Which means, perhaps, that stories can be changed...


End file.
